I aim to shape products, interfaces and services that mediate meaningful dialogues between people, systems and their environments within everyday life.
Posts tagged ‘mobile’
Feb
10
2012
AntiMap
I just downloaded the AntiMap Log iPhone app to try out on my next snowboarding trip. The mobile app allows you to record your own data in real time as you are out and about, whether it be mountain biking, skiing, running or driving. Collected data such as latitude, longitude, compass direction, speed, distance, and time, can then be analyzed and visualized with a suite of AntiMap tools: AntiMap Simple and AntiMap Video.
Originally created as a snowboarding/ski application, AntiMap Video syncs riders’ video footage with real-time stats, giving an impression of a video game:
AntiMap Simple is an HTML5/Processing visualization for the log data. The visualization below is for the same snowboarder. AntiMap describes the visualization:
Circles are used to visualise the plotted data. The color of each circle is mapped to the compass data (0˚ = black, 360˚ = white), and the size of each circle is mapped to the speed data (bigger circles = faster). The same data used in this demo, was used in the AntiMap Video snowboarding application. You can see from the visualisation, during heelside turns (left) the colours are a lot whiter/brighter than toeside turns (right). The sharper/more obvious colour changes indicate either sudden turns or spins (eg. the few black rings right in the centre).
Aug
10
2011
UI Traces
George Kokkinidis highlights the variety of user interfaces on multi-touch tablets by photographing the resulting fingerprints on an iPad surface after using different applications.
The differences are highlighted by the quality, location, and quantity of the taps and swipes, displaying the unique interactions required by each application and providing a narrative of how a certain application was used.
Read Kokkinidis’ blog entry here.
Aug
09
2011
Guidelines for Designing High Performance Mobile User Experiences
I came across a nice article on Smashing Magazine outlining some design guidelines for optimizing performance on mobile devices. Performance plays an important part in creating a valuable, enjoyable and trustworthy experience for the user, that will encourage users to continue using your application/product. Not only does the application need to look amazing, it needs to feel and work amazing as well.
The seven guidelines are as follows:
- Define UI brand signatures
- Focus the portfolio of products
- Identify the core user stories
- Optimize UI flows and elements
- Define UI scaling rules
- Use a performance dashboard
- Champion dedicated UI engineering skills
For example, front-end design can help speed up the perceived performance of a back-end delay by providing intermediary steps displaying the load progress (showing loading animations, text content, etc.) This creates the impression to the user that the system is progressing through various steps rather than experiencing a delay if they simply jumped from screen 1 to 4 as illustrated below.
May
11
2011
Lovely UI
Having worked on several projects in the mobile space over the past year, I’m completely drawn to the site Lovely UI, which showcases inspiring mobile user interfaces.
Other resources that serve as good references are Mobile Design Patterns (iOS) and Android Patterns.
Sep
30
2009
A Phone That’s More Than a Phone
The culture of cute is rampant in Japan, especially with the youth. One trend that remains ever so popular, and to which I myself have succumbed in my youthful days, is taking silly/cute/glamourous pictures with friends in pod-like photo booths. Back in the day, these pictures were printed out on wallet-sized cards or a page of stickers, but this time around I observed an interesting phenomenon of downloading the images to cellphones.
Considering the ubiquity and high-tech functions of the cellphone in Japan, it seems like a natural evolution of the “sticker booth” past time. Rather than printing out physical copies of pictures, you can now simply put your cellphone up to a screen at the side of the booth, and voilà, the images are available on your phone ready to be used as wallpaper or mass-mailed to your 100 closest friends.
